


Let Me Land Softly

by ambiguously



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Failboats In Love, M/M, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Relationship Advice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-19 10:29:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22643482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: The war is over and Finn is having trouble sorting out what that means.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn
Comments: 18
Kudos: 106
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Let Me Land Softly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merle_p](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merle_p/gifts).



First Order stormtroopers had not been raised to deal with complex emotions. Finn had been taught from childhood to care only for victory, to love only the Supreme Leader, to hate the enemy, and to mourn for no fallen comrade. FN-2187 had spent his young life trying to be the best stormtrooper he could. Finn had spent the past year of his own ignoring everything he'd been taught.

Now that decision was catching up to him. The party was winding down, the shared high from coming back alive dropping into a shared sorrow: not everyone came back, and nothing was fixed.

The first problem had no solution. The second was too huge for Finn to consider. He'd noticed the knots forming, and the faces slipping away for quiet meetings. Lando had taken the fastest route for help he could find, and had enlisted the old friends he could rely on to say yes, and their friends. Now Lando's friends met with Poe and discussed with one another what was to happen next, and decided what if any part they intended to play in that.

It occurred to Finn that Poe might accidentally be the Chancellor now.

"You all right?"

Startled, he turned to see Jannah, who sat next to him without an invitation. She gave him a quiet smile that took in more than it gave away. "You're not, are you?"

Finn shrugged. "We won."

"Yeah, and now what? Do you know what to do when there's not a war to fight?"

He shook his head. "I wanted to. I tried running away from it all as soon as I escaped."

The latest meeting had broken up. Poe emerged down the hatchway of a ship Finn didn't recognize, one of many new ships that had joined them in the battle. Jannah followed his gaze.

"You know," she said, with a teasing lightness in her voice, "we tried to make a life for ourselves. We're more than soldiers. There's someone, well," she smiled, "I think she might be ready to make a new life now that it's all finished. I didn't want to ask before."

"That's good," he said, his brain filtering her words into sense. He noticed she was watching him. "What?"

"There's someone you want to ask, maybe. About life after the war." She looked at Poe. Then she got up from her seat. "And if not, there's someone I do. See you." She walked off towards the small campfire with her friends, her old squad who'd all defected together. Not like him. He'd walked out alone, and his squad was dead, and the war was over.

* * *

More meetings were happening, and the ships in their ad hoc fleet were vanishing, and Finn was part of none of it. He wandered through the base until he found himself by the Millennium Falcon. His freedom had started with Poe, but his adventure had started when he'd first boarded this legendary ship. If he was looking for a place to belong now that the war was over, this wasn't a bad place to start.

He'd expected Chewbacca to be attending one of the mysterious meetings. Instead, Finn found the bottom half of his long, furry body sticking out from under a panel while cursing in Shryiiwook echoed weirdly from inside along with the rattles and pings of someone deep in repairs. Finn opened his mouth to volunteer to help, remembered the last time he'd tried helping Chewie with the Falcon's irascible AI systems, and snapped his mouth shut.

Rey was in the cabin she'd taken as her own. The door was open, although she sat on the floor, eyes closed.

"It's fine," she said without opening them. "You can stay."

"I didn't say anything. Are you reading minds or something?"

She opened her eyes and looked at him. "I heard you walking." Her shoulders settled in a kind of defeat. Finn instantly dropped his worries about his own future.

"Something wrong?"

"Not exactly. I felt them, Finn. All the Jedi from all time. They were right there beside me, inside my head, guiding me." For a moment, her face lit with an amazed delight. Then she lost her smile. "But I can't reach them now." She looked at him. "Luke was there, and Leia. She told me the spirits of the dead remain. I hoped I could talk to them again."

The future had a lot of questions. "What's it like? Reaching out like that?"

"I can't describe it." She tilted her head. "But when you're ready, I can show you how. That's what you wanted to talk to me about, wasn't it?"

"How long have you known?"

"Since we met. And not until this moment. Both. One of the things Leia taught me is that when you discover something that is true, your mind travels back inside the timeline of your own soul, and that knowledge becomes a part of who you always were. She had no idea Luke was her brother, but as soon as he told her, she'd always known even before they met."

That sounded like worse Jedi hokum than usual. "You can't always have known something you just found out."

"Maybe not," Rey admitted, getting to her feet. "But it's interesting to think about. The books mention the same kind of thing, a pre-memory. A few Jedi were able to tap into it and see into the future."

"Now that sounds useful." The truth was out, and less ground-shaking than he'd thought when he'd first understood what was happening to him. "Think you can figure out how to do it?"

"Nothing says we can't."

He noted the 'we.' "I'm not sure I'm ready to go down that road. You're the Jedi. I'm just me."

"Then you need to figure out what road you want," she said, and squeezed his arm as she went by him out of her cabin. "Maybe start by trying to remember what you already know."

* * *

The Resistance base had been set up to feed their group, not the extra thousands who'd shown up. Most of them ate aboard their own vessels but the lines here in the makeshift mess bustled with unfamiliar faces. Finn tried not to worry about supplies. They'd all be going their separate ways soon enough, once they sorted out where those would be.

He didn't expect to see Lando in the line right ahead of him as he got his own tray. "General," he said, with what he hoped wasn't too much awe.

"General," said Lando back, and Finn flushed. That was right. He'd gotten the world's fastest field promotion.

They moved through the line. Finn knew this man's reputation, and figured he'd spent his life dining on rare birds' eggs and expensive wines. Somehow, even though they piled their plates with the same gray-green rations, Lando's managed to look palatable, like some high-class dish with a fancy name Finn couldn't pronounce from a Core World he would never be able to afford to visit.

"Care to share a table?"

"Sure," said Finn, taking a seat opposite him. "I expected you to be in those meetings."

"I was. Between you and me, about nine tenths of all meetings can be skipped. The secret is figuring out which one is important, and the bigger secret is making sure you're not obligated to attend or worse run the other nine." He gestured to the ship where the current meeting was taking place. "General Dameron is playing host here and has to attend all of them."

"That makes sense. If he's going to be Chancellor...." Finn had barely got the words out when Lando burst out laughing.

"Sorry," he said, reaching for his glass of water, holding it as elegantly as he would a goblet. "Chancellor? Is that what Poe told you?"

"No. I just figured. We won, right? Isn't that what happened last time? The Rebellion won, Mon Mothma became Chancellor."

Lando's eyes still glittered with amusement. "That's not exactly what happened. And it's definitely not happening now. They're more likely to make me Chancellor, and before you think about my political ambitions, I'm not going to be Chancellor, either. I don't think we're going to have a central government for a while."

Finn leaned in. "Then why all the talks?"

"People have a lot to talk about. The fleets I brought didn't come when you called before. There's bad blood between them all. Some carry old grudges. Others have trust issues."

"Good thing they didn't have any grudges against you."

This drew another laugh, a shorter and more introspective one this time. "No, most of them have grudges against me, and none of them trust me. But they know I don't throw in with lost causes, and if I was ready to go into this fight, they trusted I was betting on a sure thing." He fixed Finn with a friendly stare. "Don't tell them I wasn't? Our secret?"

Finn nodded. "They're really just in there talking about their feelings?"

"More talking about how angry this one still is about what that other one said twenty years ago about his husband, but you get the picture. People say things they don't mean, and those fester. It ruins friendships, and almost cost us the war. Talking it out is good." Lando took a bite of his dinner. "Mark my words, you don't want to spend the next forty years of your life wondering if your fellow General is biding her time until she gets her revenge for when you traded her in exchange for a pig."

Finn laughed, then caught the mild look of worry in Lando's otherwise unshakable demeanor. "I'll keep that in mind."

* * *

Finn had spent his life sleeping in groups, first in the crèche, then in the barracks, and now in the ramshackle tents that served as the Resistance living quarters. He was comfortable sleeping in the company of a dozen others. The few nights he'd slept alone in a cabin on the Falcon, he'd been unable to catch more than a wink of sleep.

Poe slept alone in his own tent. Finn didn't know how he could stand it.

He waited in Poe's tent now, as the party struck up again now that night had fallen. He'd even seen BB-8 rolling around enjoying himself with the other droids. Fewer revelers remained than last night, and the night before. Some of their own people were leaving. Rose and Beaumont had taken a small team to help clean up a nearby system whose First Order presence hadn't gotten the notice they'd lost. He wasn't sure if they planned on rejoining after they were finished, or if they'd take the opportunity to stay gone. Rose had talked about going back to Canto Bight, this time with a gunship.

Everyone was looking to the future now. Nobody knew what it would look like yet, but some of them were making plans.

"Hi," Poe said, seeing him as he stepped into his tent.

"Hi."

"Didn't see you around today." Poe turned to the small table beside his bunk, setting down the data pad in his hands before emptying his pockets. "I was starting to wonder if you hopped a ship out of here."

"No. Rey is talking about taking the Falcon to Tatooine. Something she wants to do there. I might ride along."

Poe still didn't look at him. "You kids have fun. I'm sure you can tell her what you wanted to say along the way."

"She already knows."

"That's great," Poe said, and he almost sounded like he meant it. "I'm glad you told her."

"She already knew. She always knew even though she just found out. She says it's a Jedi thing." Finn had been thinking about that for hours, and he wasn't sure he understood. "That sounds like nonsense to me. I'm going to make a lousy Jedi."

"Well, yeah, you would." Poe's eyes flickered to him. "You what?"

"I'm not going to be as good at it as Rey is. I want to learn more, but I don't think that's my destiny." Even the word 'destiny' felt weird in his mouth. He could almost feel Han Solo's ghost next to him rolling his eyes.

"You're a Jedi." Some people would have said it with awe. Poe said it like he was half a breath away from laughing his ass off.

"Maybe," said Finn. He closed his eyes and reached out his hand. He heard Poe's chuckle and ignored him. Poe had set his identichip on the table when he'd emptied his pockets. Finn focused on it, reaching out from inside himself.

He opened his eyes. The identichip had risen a centimeter off the table. Poe stared.

"Huh."

"Yeah."

Poe turned his head to him. "That's what you wanted to tell Rey?" Finn nodded. "And you couldn't tell her in front of me?"

"You laughed at me. Right now. No, I wasn't going to tell you first."

Poe rubbed his face with his hand. "Okay. So you're a Jedi. Did you come here just to show me that? Because I'm beat, and I've got three more meetings to run before breakfast tomorrow."

"I came to talk." He took in Poe's exhausted expression. "It can wait."

"No," said Poe. "Now's better. If you're going to Tatooine with Rey, we'd better have this out before you leave, too."

"I said I might go. This isn't about Tatooine."

"Fine. Takodana. Wherever you two decide to go after this."

"After what?" Finn gestured at the tent. "I don't know what 'after' even means. I've been fighting since I was a little kid. The war's over. And? We just stop fighting, and we live like normal people now? How? What is that?" Frustration filled his voice, almost turning his words into a whine, and he hated that. He hadn't come here tonight to complain.

"Find a nice planet. Settle down with someone. Crank out a kid or two." Poe removed his coat, hanging it on a peg. "That's what normal people do. I've heard."

"And what about people like us?"

Poe shrugged. "If we're like the old-timers I've been talking to for days, we keep refighting the battles inside our heads, and we have trouble letting go, and we argue about things none of us can change about what happened before." The shrug turned into a slump. "I appreciate the help they brought. I could do without the crash course in who still isn't speaking to who thirty years on from the Endor after-party."

"They really hold grudges that long?"

"You'd be amazed."

Finn said, "I'm sorry."

"It's fine, I can deal with them."

He took Poe's shoulders. "Not what I meant. I'm sorry about what I said. About how you're not Leia. I'm sorry I didn't tell you the thing about the Force. You're my best friend. I've never had a best friend before." He thought about Slip for a moment, and he understood why some of the older faces might never let go of some things. "I'm going to screw up. You're going to have to tell me when I get it wrong."

"Nope," Poe said. "We agreed when you joined up that you got to make your own mistakes like everyone else. You said you didn't want me holding your hand every day."

"I didn't say that."

"You did. Your words." Poe made a face. "Rey was there. She said something about holding hands I didn't catch."

Finn let out an annoyed breath. "She has issues about being touched. Everyone knows that." Never mind that she'd kicked his butt when they'd first met, and shouted at him for grabbing her hand. Finn couldn't count the number of other Resistance fighters who'd come upon her unawares and found themselves staring up at the sky. She was getting better about it. She liked hugs when she knew they were coming. It was the surprise claps on the back or brushes to her arms that ended badly.

He shook his head. "Why are we talking about Rey again?"

Poe said, "You like talking about Rey. You like talking to Rey. You like Rey."

"Sure. She's my other best friend, and she does tell me when I've messed up."

"Fine. Glad we had this chat."

"What is up with you?" Finn came here to apologize, and instead he was getting irritated. "Are you and Rey fighting again?"

"And we're back to talking about Rey." Poe gave him a sad chuckle. "Look, go to Tatooine. Have a good time. Go wherever else you want to go with her. It's fine. The war's over."

"Where are you going to go?"

"I'm still working on that. We have to rebuild the Navy. I might re-enlist if they'll have me."

Finn had started the morning half-convinced his best buddy was going to be the new Chancellor, and now Poe wasn't even sure if he would have a job tomorrow. Weird day.

"Would they have me?"

"Probably. Ex-trooper with military experience, and you didn't defect from them? They might even let you keep the rank, General."

"Does that mean I get to boss everyone around? I could get used to that."

"Sure." Poe grinned, and for the first time tonight, it was one of his easy smiles. "You get in, start running the place, and you can put in a good word for me when I re-apply."

"You have to stay a General, too. We can order everyone around together," said Finn, trying to picture this. The Resistance's approach to military uniform was anything but uniform. He kept imagining himself and Poe in General Hux's snappy outfit. His mental Poe looked very nice in those sleek lines. The Poe in front of him looked like he was tired enough to fall asleep where he stood. "I should let you get some sleep."

Poe looked down at the data pad. "After I get through these reports, maybe."

General Organa had worked herself to the bone each night to keep the fight alive. Poe was following in her footsteps, trying to live up to her example. But the war was over. "I bet the reports can wait," said Finn.

"There's just going to be more of them to deal with tomorrow."

"Make someone else do it, General."

"Who?" His face etched with tight lines. "Our people are leaving, and if I don't get the support of all these other fleets, we're going to see more uprisings from the First Order holdouts. The same thing happened after the Battle of Endor, even after the Battle of Jakku. I don't want to see her legacy fall apart right after we won it."

"It won't. You know she'd be super proud of you now. You finished the job."

"We finished the job," Poe said. "And now you're leaving, too."

"Why do you keep saying that?"

"You said so. You came here to let me know you and Rey are headed off together to Tatooine. I'm not going to stand in your way. I've wanted you to be free to live your own life ever since the day we met."

Finn stared at him. "We're going to be gone for three days. We're coming back as soon as Rey finishes the thing she wants to do there. And I'm not even sure I'm going. Rey and Chewie can go on their own."

"Fine," said Poe. Finn was still learning to read expressions after a lifetime of not being allowed to look at the faces of his closest friends.

"Did you think Rey and I were running off together? Like, together together?"

"It's fine," Poe said. "I'm happy you figured things out."

"It's not like that," said Finn. "She's my best friend."

"You said I was your best friend." There was a note of petulance in his voice. Finn wasn't the only one starting to whine tonight.

"You are. Rey's my best friend that I fight beside, and who's going to teach me this Jedi stuff maybe. You're my best friend that I want to spend the rest of my life beside."

"Yeah, but...." Poe stopped himself. With a tentative query, he asked, "Beside how?"

"Beside however. I didn't come here to talk about Rey or Tatooine or anything. I came to find out what you wanted to do now that the war's over. I want to do that too, whatever it is. I want a future with you." He tried figuring out Poe's expression again, and couldn't. Finn sighed. "But apparently that's not something normal people ask, and I screwed up again. Sorry."

Poe crossed the distance between them and kissed him. Finn almost fell away, startled. His hands flailed before resting on Poe's arms. His personal experience with kissing was next to zero, and only 'next to' on a technicality. Poe's mouth moved against his carefully, with half a smile on his lips. It was pretty nice, actually, and better than Finn had imagined.

"Hi," he said, when Poe pulled his face back.

"Too much?" Another worry line crossed his face. He already had too many of them these days. Finn thought it might be a perfect post-war job to help wipe those away. One of his jobs, anyway. Being in charge of the next Republic's Navy sounded fun, too, as long as Poe was there.

He realized he hadn't replied.

"Better try again and be sure we get it right."

They tried again. They got it right. And Finn knew exactly where he wanted his future to be.


End file.
